Cyber Attacks Bigger Threat Than Natural Disasters: 2010 State Of Enterprise Security
Added 9th Mar 2010The results of the study highlight the fact that Indian CIOs are recognizing the importance of security. 57 percent of the respondents from India have affirmed that their organizations will see an increase in the IT security budgets for 2010. Another 35 percent confirmed that they didn't plan to lower theirs from previous years. This doesn't come as a surprise when it is found that Rs. 60 lakh is the average annual costs incurred by Indian enterprises on account of cyber attacks. A huge majority (81 percent) incurred direct financial costs in terms of brand reputation and lost revenues.
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While 66 per cent respondents have been on the receiving end of cyber attacks in past 12 months, 34 per cent say attacks were malicious and external; 23 percent experienced internal malicious attacks; and 31 per cent were due to unintentional internal actions. "New IT initiatives like Saas, Iaas and Virtualization complicate matters and add to the security woes of enterprises making management significantly difficult," said Vishal Dhupar, MD Symantec India.
The study also states that close to half of the organizations have an understaffed enterprise security team, especially in terms of security systems management, vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection. "It also becomes significantly difficult for the enterprises to manage security due to the rapid changes in the threat landscape which includes spear phishing and zero day threats," said Dhupar. Issues like securing the end points become even more challenging with the ubiquity of laptops, tablet PCs and smart phones.
The study therefore recommends enterprises to identify their key resources - infrastructure and information- and enforce IT policies that help them mange their systems better with superior control. Apart from this, "The traditional defensive methods also need to change and proactive approaches like reputation based services, heuristics and basic behavioral knowledge are set to be the new paradigm," emphasized Dhupar. "But nothing at the end of the day can compensate for user awareness and alertness and efforts need to directed towards this," he concluded.
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